I can't imagine how difficult it must be to make the choice to carry them now. No doubt they make fine yeast but you are also going to hear a lot of negativity from your customers.
Question about new White Labs “Next Generation” yeast packets.
- Thread starter camonick
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Jetpack_Maniac
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I got my LHBS selling both the liquid and dry 001 for $15 each. It's not terrible for the liquid but hurts for the dry. I am 001 dry curious, but not for that price. I have Atlantic Brew Supply as the slightly farther store and they are doing dry for $10, so maybe one day I'll try it.
Recently visited WL during Homebrew Con. Very impressive, wonderful people who really care about brewing and brewers. Love their tap room where you can try the same beer fermented with several different yeast strains to see how the yeast contributions drive a different outcome. Their discussion about quality control and purity was amazing, and generated a lot of trust for their product.
That said, double the price matters, and my LHBS dropped WL as a result. Heard the same "dropping WL" comment over and over at Homebrew con. Cannot imagine WL will continue on this path.
As a competitive homebrewer, I get tired of cross-referencing yeast strains, as the supposed matches are not always the same strain. And, almost impossible to get liquid yeast mailings in southern AZ for a lot of every year.
That said, double the price matters, and my LHBS dropped WL as a result. Heard the same "dropping WL" comment over and over at Homebrew con. Cannot imagine WL will continue on this path.
As a competitive homebrewer, I get tired of cross-referencing yeast strains, as the supposed matches are not always the same strain. And, almost impossible to get liquid yeast mailings in southern AZ for a lot of every year.
I provided a pretty in depth feedback to WL about the fact that they created a product that doesn't really have a market. All the different ways a customer might decide to shop for yeast left their product as one of the least likely choices.
I went through several different iterations of beer type, batch size, pack age, etc and showed that there's always a cheaper way to do it with Omega or Imperial. The ONLY reason other than brand recognition that I started selling WL was because the pure pitch classic packs were still priced at about the same as Omega but had very long shelf life. Now they are 50% higher in price than omega with 25% less yeast.
Long story short, it's pretty rare that a single pack of either of the labs is enough for the pitch rate needs of a 6 gallon batch. Whether the user decides to double up the packs or make a starter, Omega is always the cheaper way. In that rare case where one pack is enough, it's almost always an Omega pack that happens to be 2-3 weeks old.
I went through several different iterations of beer type, batch size, pack age, etc and showed that there's always a cheaper way to do it with Omega or Imperial. The ONLY reason other than brand recognition that I started selling WL was because the pure pitch classic packs were still priced at about the same as Omega but had very long shelf life. Now they are 50% higher in price than omega with 25% less yeast.
Long story short, it's pretty rare that a single pack of either of the labs is enough for the pitch rate needs of a 6 gallon batch. Whether the user decides to double up the packs or make a starter, Omega is always the cheaper way. In that rare case where one pack is enough, it's almost always an Omega pack that happens to be 2-3 weeks old.
I don't suppose they responded?
I used to use WL exclusively but when they dropped the screw top vials (yes it was a while ago) and enough of my yeast squirted out of the top of those soft plastic bags when I snipped the top off, I made the transition to Fermentis and never looked back. When our local HBS here in San Antonio went out of business last year I could order dry yeast online and not worry about ice packs etc.
I don't brew often enough to make yeast harvesting worth it so at $24 per pitch that is almost half the cost of a 5-6 gallon brew run. Lost me forever!
I don't brew often enough to make yeast harvesting worth it so at $24 per pitch that is almost half the cost of a 5-6 gallon brew run. Lost me forever!
Did you see evidence that the WL packs had a longer shelf life than other brands? It can be hard to sort through the marketing claims from various manufacturers. I use a lot of dry yeast now, but WL has been my most used liquid brand over the past 5 years. I liked the compact packaging and I felt like they had decent shelf life, but I still saw fairly sluggish results with 4+ month old packs.
The old pack size actually fit me well. I often brew 2.5 gallon batches and would direct pitch a pack (for a low gravity beer and fresh pack). I could either make a starter for a larger batch, but I would often just harvest from the initial 2.5 gallon batch and get a few batches out of one pack. Maybe the resealable pack is useful for us small batch brewers, but doubling the cost of yeast is more likely just to push me more towards $5 packs of dry yeast.
They said to call and we'll have a talk. When I can find some time I'm going to do that.
Anecdotally yes. We've been selling WL for a little over a year and we don't consider it discounted until it hits 6 months. We have enough cases where customers used 5-6 month old packs and had no problems. Note, by "no problems" I don't mean people that think a single 80B pack is enough for 5 gallons but those who calculated cell count based on WL numbers.. I know there is a blog post out there somewhere that I can't find at the moment where a brewery did some cell counts on various aged PP packs and found the viability actually beat the WL estimates. The viability claims below suggest that WL is publishing data that they've recorded rather than a generic marketing claim of "high viability".
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